MULTAN appeared to be oblivious to the fact that an election was just round the corner until Dec 17 when Mian Nawaz Sharif led a big rally in the city to start electioneering in earnest.

Up until that moment, election activity had been confused and half-hearted and rather limited to certain parts of the city like the area where Fazal Mukhtar – a resourceful industrialist-turned politician – is contesting on a Pakistan Muslim League-Q ticket. Local residents say Mr Mukhtar’s campaign may break all previous records of election expenditures.

The rest of the city waited for any of the giants around to shake it out of its deep slumber — anyone from among Javed Makhdoom Hashmi, Syed Yusuf Raza Gillani, Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Sikander Hayat Khan Bosan, or better still all of them together and apart.

The talk about boycott by some parties put a dampener on electioneering with a major player such as Pakistan Muslim League-N only taking so long to decide that it will contest polls. Then the parties also haggled over candidates till December 16, the day the Election Commission put up the final list of contestants. Adjustments were made till the last moment. For example, Yusuf Raza Gillani, who had filed nomination papers from two seats, withdrew from his ancestral city constituency late on Sunday. He will be fighting it out with Sikander Hayat Khan Bosan in NA-151.

PML-Q contributed its share to the confusion. Some of its former members, who are now contesting as independent candidates, claim to have blessings of the PML-Q leadership, which leaves the voters perplexed. Rana Qasim Noon, former provincial minister, is contesting from

NA-153 as an independent but he says he has the backing of the PML-Q. So does Makhdoom Haider Raza, an independent candidate for PP-199. Iqbal Khan Khakwani was kind of promoted as the party’s candidate in NA-149 for four long years but the ticket went to Tahir Rashid. Mr Amir Nasim suffered a similar fate in NA-150, as Fazal Mukhtar forced his way through.

Another factor for the lackadaisical election in Multan so far is that the political heavyweights who hail from here haven’t been able to give the city the time it deserves. Makhdoom Javed Hashmi of PML-N and Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Punjab chief of the Pakistan People’s Party, are two national level leaders who have been locking horns in general elections from a seat here. Mr Hashmi is this time round contesting from four constituencies, one of them being as far away as Rawalpindi, and Mr Qureshi has to spend much of his time on organising the party throughout the province.

In the absence of a campaign which could reflect public mood local political analysts are reluctant to predict the outcome. “No one really knows which way the wind would blow. We are still waiting for early clues,” says Mr Khalid Baig, a Multan-based newspaper columnist.

“In fact, no-one has approached us yet,” Ghulam Hussain of Basti Laber speaks for the people who are still undecided who they are going to vote for. “Hopefully, electioneering will pick up after Eid and help us make up our mind.”

He reveals no secret when he says that the candidates need not approach women voters “who they have never approached in the past”. “It is the male head of the family who decides, who, in turn, is instructed by the local landlord who the family should vote for.” But votes of women do have a value: “These are used to rig elections. You know it is indecent to investigate a woman.”

“There is dichotomy in the electoral scheme,” confesses an official of the local government who is to trouble wary to identify himself by name. “There are polling booths which are supposed to cater to 7,000 people while the actual electoral roll stops at number 5,000,” he says. “This is what the opposition parties are objecting to.”